If you want to try (There's no worse you could do)
by wade bram wilson
Summary: Arthur/Eames. Origins story/Twisted love story. You don't make friends in the business of dreamshare, and you don't fall in love.


_Warnings: canonical character death, depictions of violence and suicide, m/m relationship, sexual themes, polypharmacy, angst. SO MUCH ANGST!  
_Thanks Cherith for betaing this! : )

-

_May 12, 2006.  
Four years before Inception. _

Eames can see streaks of orange creeping from the roof of the car as they approach it, crystallised red flakes eating through the metal. He is almost sure this car isn't going anywhere, but _they_ need to, so it must.

His blood is pounding through his veins and he feels like something better than muscle, better than gunpowder. He feels so immortal in this moment; it won't do at all to die now.

Arthur reaches it first, breaks the front window with the butt of him gun, spills into the seat now littered with glass chips that he just knows are going to ruin his suit.

He carries his shoes in one hand, Five Seven in the other; terrifying, so beautiful is he.

He opens the driver's side door for Eames (who thought it was the passenger side), who falls in, arms up over his head holding the PASIV. He throws the silver briefcase into the backseat without any care. If Arthur weren't cursing his stupid fucking new dress shoes, he might have snapped.

Eames is smiling his crooked toothed smile, ecstatic.

"Christ, is this float even yours?" The question is redundant, Eames knows. Arthur takes care of his things. But at times like these, when they are running for their lives, he likes to take advantage of Arthur's inability to keep up his impassive mask.

During most flights (and fights), Arthur's face reads pure exhilaration. Right now, he looks more offended, eyebrow arched in perfect disdain.

"No it's not fucking mine," he spits, venomous; "We're borrowing it."

"Oh. Makes sense... Have you got the keys, then?" Eames pretends to tease. He adjusts both mirrors and their pursuers are getting bigger and bolder in his rear view, so close.

"No, I fucking-!" Arthur starts. Stops. Starts again, "You've never hijacked a car." It's not a question, and he chases it with a resigned _I-should-have-known_ sigh. "What kind of useless racketeer were you?"

Eames looks nearly apologetic, though he isn't in the least; "the kind who could easily sneak out his father's Aston Martin."

"You privileged bag of dicks," Arthur mutters while he aims. The back window of the car sprays out in a shower of glass crystals, like a flock of birds.

Another shot and the faceless suits chasing them fall back like bowling pins, crouching behind the other cars in the lot.

"Or his Bentley," Eames adds.

(Eames, coming from a family like his, always had the luxury of choice. He could have been anything he wanted as long as he was okay with disappointing a few people. Funnily enough, it never had bothered him. He's been an art thief, a soldier, a forger, an actor, a conman, an artist, a gambler, and a pickpocket, sometimes playing several roles at once. He's dabbled in psychiatry, sociology, philosophy, and literature.

But he's found nothing quite like dreaming, nor does he suspect he ever will.)

Arthur fires again, and the way he is lined up right now, between Eames and the setting sun, his hard edges are painted pale gold. He looks so young. Too young to be so jaded.

"Why were you even conning, you useless fucker?" Eames is sure that he means those insults like endearments.

"Same reason we're here, darling." _The thrill of it. This thing we do together. Living._ "Don't tell me you learnt to twoc through the necessity of poverty? That would break my heart."

Arthur (An orphan, and a product of the foster care system) did, but that is not the kind of thing you share with fellow career criminals. That is especially not the kind of thing you share with Eames. Who'd only start thinking he had permission to pry.

"Little street criminal Arthur;" Eames continues, when the silence, excluding gunfire, gets too long. He has already drawn his own conclusions; "I can tell you this now: you've never set foot in juvie. Just look at you."

Eames is right; Arthur had chosen to go to war instead.

(Arthur's beginnings (before he was called Arthur) sound like the terrible start to so many sad stories, but his story is not sad. He was the perfect tragic-orphan success story, pride of the US military, right up until the moment he realised that his mind was wasted within their scope and deserted. The rest is a national security nightmare.

Twenty-four, with three fast-tracked college degrees; Arthur is fluent in five different languages, and has lost count of the amount of people he's killed and ways he knows how to. There is a piece of paper in the world that tells of his birth, but the same can't be said for the names in the parent fields. Those people never lived outside Arthur's convenience, much like the twelve other aliases he has picked for himself, complete with official documentation.

Arthur writes his own story.)

"On my left," Eames says, with some alarm. It's a wonder how the wanker managed to sneak up on them so thoroughly, what with such poor instincts.

Arthur swings his Five-Seven around into Eames' eyeline. Two bullets; one for the glass, the second lodges in the suited meat of the man's stomach. The body drops to the ground. Childlike, Arthur doesn't flinch. Neither does Eames. He wipes a speckling of blood from his cheek and thinks he might have just pushed it into his eye instead.

"Switch seats with me," Eames says, blinking; "I'll just balls it up."

"No. You're a crappy shot."

Eames is not, but he lets it slide. "In your country, I am a far worse driver, darling."

Arthur, whose gun twitches toward Eames like he might just switch targets (he still might), looks at him with stony eyes, and then thrusts the weapon into his hands instead.

He pushes over into Eames' space, his pretty head leaning down into his lap, hiding an arrogant smirk that Eames can't see. He starts pulling wires out of the dashboard's underbelly, dark hair shorn short out of habit. Eames wants to run his hand through it.

"You know," Eames says, helping himself to a full magazine from Arthur's suit jacket pocket, and reloading the weapon; "I've thought about this exact scenario, only fewer trousers and much more tongue."

"Less gunfire?"

"Funnily enough, no."

The car starts with a choking spark of life and Arthur sits up and snatches his gun back from Eames.

"Drive, asshole."

"Anywhere you want to go, darling."

_Rewind. Turn the clocks back four more years: It's 2002.  
_  
Eames is the first dreamshare forger in the world, a revolutionary, you might say.

It wasn't that forging had been unachievable; for those with the aptitude it could be almost easy. It just happened no one had thought to try it. An unimaginative bunch, Eames thought. Not that anyone could expect a bunch of soldiers and architects to know how to dream properly - at least, not off of paper.

But in a world where people have the power to change anything, Eames thought it strange that none had tried to change themselves, or that none had felt as fluid in their skin as he. Maybe they were all just terribly secure.

Contrary to popular belief (read: Arthur's opinion), Eames is not all that hung up on himself. But he does know who he is, which is probably why he finds it so easy to leave pieces of himself behind for a forge. Why he can so easily pick himself back up again afterwards. He's been doing this for four years now, and though others have appropriated his craft, Eames is still the best.

Arthur has been quietly climbing the ladder. Unlike Eames, he has worked himself down to his chaffing bones to be where he is today; he thinks he is finally, exactly where he belongs. He doesn't need people to know his name or his skill, in fact he would rather fly under their radars for as long as he can manage.

Arthur has built himself a network of information and resources. He has a bank of rapports earned and favours owed.  
He is connected to the world by pieces of twine, millions of them. A tweak or a tremor is all he needs. Arthur is at the centre of his universe, and he is very in control.

Now, Arthur is ready to go international, to challenge himself. He calls Eames, who answers.

They are in Johannesburg, in OR Tambo Airport, when they first meet in person. Both of them are the kind of self-assured that only young people can be.

Eames is good enough at his craft to pick Arthur out of the crowd. Arthur with his sharp lines and careful assembly; he is tightly coiled, full of potential. He scrutinises and catalogues his surroundings with measured intensity, dark eyes like the barrel of a gun.

Arthur knows Eames intimately on paper. He picked him, after all. But even if he hadn't gone over his dossiers until the edges were soft and worn and the black ink of Eames' paper-trail was smudged on his palms, he thinks he would still be able to find him. Eames looks exactly how Arthur wants him to look; he blends into the hundreds of other faceless people in the airport, each of them nothing but their luggage tags and boarding passes. He could be one of them, but he isn't. Eames is all of them, versatile and ever-changing. He appears exactly as Arthur wants him to appear because Eames knows what Arthur wants in an employee, and so he is.

Eames will stay in character until he has observed the point man enough to know which of his buttons can be pushed, and which lines need to be toed. Later, he will delight in pushing as many as he can, edging closer and closer to that line.

Arthur is himself from the beginning. He can't really be anyone else.

They don't need to speak or introduce themselves, but they do anyway.

"Eames," Arthur says; hand outstretched for the forger to take. He is poised like a threat, or a warning sign, but he doesn't realise it. Eames can read it in his subtle frown, in the taut lines of his posture, flexed like a bowstring.

"Arthur," Eames returns, tasting the name wrapped up in his accent. He takes Arthur's hand, static electricity pricking between them. It feels like a stand-off. "You are a surprise," physically, he means.

Arthur, who knows that he hasn't begun to surprise Eames, keeps his face impassive but for one arched brow; "Wish I could say the same." He turns to walk to the baggage carousel, leaving Eames to trail behind him, bemused and intrigued.

The airport is a house of glass, the rain outside collects in droplets and rivulets on the window panes. The sunlight pouring through throws patterns that fall on Arthur's pale skin, his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. His boyish face is unfeasibly misleading, Eames thinks,

Arthur and Eames come together this way, and from then on, they crash against each other like the ocean.

Their first job together finishes without a single new bullet-wound or grudge made, and Arthur is disappointed. He misses car chases and gunfights. He misses the calculated danger of the military, even though he much prefers being in charge of his own operations.

Arthur thrills at a job well done, but there is nothing like a near death experience. He knows how it sounds, but Arthur is far from reckless. He is not the type of man who would deliberately sabotage himself or his team, he likes success too much.

But it is an itch; fighting for his life is how Arthur knows that he is living.

Eames learns that Arthur is a hurricane, he breezes through lives and places and jobs. He wreaks destruction only where he intends, leaving no fingerprints. He passes everything else by, and it is like he's never been, like he doesn't exist. But Arthur is real. Probably the most real person Eames has ever known.

They walk away from each other and it is easy.

Afterwards, Eames finds himself craving that smirk, that biting wit. He craves Arthur like he craves dreams and Somnacin. It is an itch.

_October, 2003._

The second time they find each other, it is because Eames orchestrates it.

_Arthur works well_, Eames could say. _He is a consummate professional. _If anyone asks: _Why Arthur?_ It is because _he does his job well._

The truth is the job is too simple for them and low-paying. Eames subsidises Arthur's share with his own to make the offer more appealing.

Eames doesn't know that it was Arthur's alias that tipped him off to the job to start with.

It's the sort of assignment that doesn't require an architect: Arthur creates a dreamspace more than adequate for them both. That's just how a mind like Arthur's works: compartmentalising, secreting away. He creates mazes unconsciously; it's like his own complex filing system.

Eames unconsciously dreams shortcuts.

If Arthur dreams a city, Eames dreams labyrinthine sewer tunnels beneath it.

If Arthur dreams an old hotel, Eames is a system of dumbwaiters and pulleys.

It says something about them both that the only time this is reversed is with one another in the waking world.

This is how Eames learnt to forge:

She'd woken up one morning feeling very much like a woman, uncomfortable in her boxer briefs, and with scruff on her chin. It happened enough that by this point Eames had learnt what to do to feel more comfortable with herself. She'd shaved clean, moisturised and put on a lovely floral printed shirt and her favourite perfume before leaving the hotel room for work.

When Eames had dreamt that day, she'd woken up on the first level a woman, and felt at home. After that, she pushed herself more. She realised that dreams didn't confine her to one image, but rather, let her trick reality into projecting how she saw herself, and later, how she chose to see herself. A whole new world opened up and Eames became an artist again.

The first time Eames had been female in a dream with Arthur, the man had quirked an eyebrow, as he does, and plunged right into work. Nothing at all different.

It wasn't a secret that they were attracted to one another, it's always been a friction that they would push and then ignore and then push again. On that day, there was a worm in Eames gut that wondered if anything would change, squirming and gnawing. Eames knew what Arthur's gaze felt like, had felt it often enough, and she felt it then but couldn't decide if there was any kind of fundamental change. Wondered why she even cared.

"Something wrong," she had said, determinately casual.

Arthur didn't miss a beat, "You look good."

"Good?"

"Yeah, good."

"Better than normal?" she pried.

"Just different."

"Different good or different-"

-"What do you want, Eames? A fucking love letter? We're here to work."

And that was that. Maybe it was a backwards compliment? His way of saying, 'It makes no difference to me.' But avoidance still, as is typical of Arthur. Maybe he had revealed too much with that. To Eames, it had felt like just enough.)

-

_November, 2003_

The first time Eames calls him darling, they are walking past their mark's apartment complex, and Arthur is cataloguing the face of the building, noting all the little scuffs and cracks and graffiti that make it real. Arthur stops walking, and Eames fumbles to do the same.

What he had meant to say was: _Fancy stopping for lunch? This is bollocks boring._ But what had slipped past his lips instead was: "Fancy stopping for lunch, _darling?_" and the rest of his thoughts had gotten lost trying to keep his composure through the offending endearment.

"Do I look like a darling?" Arthur asks, rhetorically of course.

Eames wants to say yes, but Arthur narrows his eyes, ruthless.

"Have I ever done anything that could be described as darling?"

"But Arthur, that's what makes it ironic," he lies.

Arthur keeps walking, and Eames fumbles to do the same.

_July, 2005.  
Amsterdam, The Netherlands_

Eames sits across from Mal in the café. She is small, but large, too big to be contained in all her divinity. In a word, Mal is perfect. Eames doesn't like purple prose (though he's been known to make exceptions), but he couldn't describe this woman without it. It is a job interview, but it feels like he is meeting Arthur's family.

Mal is jealous of the man who has been taking up so much of Arthur's time. She wants to dissect him and find out what he has inside that keeps Arthur engaged. Mal is his best friend, and the closest thing to family he's ever had, but even with her, Arthur has always drifted. They've never been apart for more than a year, but he always comes back when he is ready.

She'd chased him once, but Arthur cannot be caught unless he means to be. So she lets him go again and again, because that is who he is; Mal decided a long time ago that she would be his anchor.

This Eames has followed him around like a dog, and Arthur has let himself be caught. Maybe Arthur is a cat, and Eames is his favourite toy. Or maybe Arthur really is caught. She has her suspicions.

Eames is jealous too; he doesn't like to share.

"Mon Cher! Order whatever you like. Be welcome," she says, dropping kisses on his stubbled cheeks; "I have heard so much about you."

Eames quirks an eyebrow, and Mal laughs. A beautiful, enchanting laugh, and Eames thinks he knows why Arthur loves her.

"Oh non! Not from our Arthur," she laughs, musical; "Not in words, but you read it in his eyes. He doesn't know himself."

And that stumps Eames, because Arthur's eyes have always been so closed to him. So void.  
Arthur still carries himself with that casual disdain, like he knows so much more than he should. Like he is better. And he is: smart, ruthless, jaded, Arthur.

Not for the first time, Eames wonders how many years Arthur has spent dreaming. How many years he has really lived.

"He recommended you, you know."

"Course he did. I asked him to."

"You misunderstand. Arthur does not recommend," she tuts, "Other people are like weights to Arthur. A chore, not an asset. The only person he has given me besides you is mon amour, my Dominic. Arthur is never wrong."

"Maybe you underestimate my dazzling charm?" He smirks, lazy; "But you have piqued my curiosity now, Mademoiselle. Tell me, how did you meet our point man?"

"He has not told you?" Mal's hands are birds, fluttering and framing her smoky voice, building her words up and waving him off as she pleases; "Ah, Arthur est mon âme. If he wants you to know our past, you will hear it from him."

"I shall make sure to ask him."

Eames is fidgeting now, he is a man who likes a puzzle, and Mal has just supplied him with more pieces for this one. She notices the way he rolls his toothpick between his lips, but not in the way that she suspects Arthur notices.

"Pardon me for presuming, but it sounds like I've got the job already."

"Do not presume, Monsieur Eames. I will judge your skill for myself. I will need you to forge for me. I have a building where we can dream close by."

Eames has a few personas that he can try on for her, like outfits in his wardrobe. Some he is fond of, others he hates, but they are all useful, each are tied to different parts of his psyche. They make up a kind of portfolio of his. But he wants to make something special, he wants to impress her.

Which is why when he excuses himself to go to the loo, he lifts Mal's purse and mobile phone on his way.

The purse is elegant and black, he expected no less from a woman like Mal. Inside are bank cards, driver's license, all the usual tripe that makes an identity. She doesn't keep receipts, but she has a photo. It is of an older man, and he has to be her father; a father who is close to her but who she does not see very often, probably because of her work. He has a serious face, and sharp eyebrows that probably made him quite attractive in his youth.

He flips through her phone contacts, finds an email address under 'Papa' that spells out her father's full name. Uses his own phone to search the man; he's a university professor, a researcher. Eames finds a few more photos, clothing references; tweed jackets and brown loafers. Finds out Miles is English, a London boy, a simple enough accent. Eames listens to a voicemail message, practices reading one of the man's text messages aloud.

He returns her things, disguising his actions with a hand on her shoulder just before the waiter brings them their lunch bill.

Mal takes him to a new apartment complex, an un-personable and empty unit. They go to sleep and wake up in the same café. A precise replica down to the brand of the sugar packets on their table

"Very nice," he tells Mal, and she scoffs at him like he has just complimented her on microwave cooking. How very Arthurian of her.

There is a difference, however, in the bathroom. It is so much prettier now, with floor to ceiling mirrors made just for him, like a gift.

He exits the restroom wearing Mallorie's father, walking like a scholar, sporting the smile that Miles wears so often for his daughter in the pictures she takes. He greets her with a 'hello sweetheart' like he's seen in their message history, her eyes light up and she is beaming up at him, ecstatic.

Then she tells him that he has the walk wrong, and the eyes.

He tells her the pictures on her phone were too small.

He gets the job.

_August, 2005  
Paris, France_

They arrive at Charles De Gaulle. Eames' plane has brought him straight from Amsterdam; Arthur's, Chicago. The headlights at the taxi bank flicker across Arthur's face, lighting up the carefully blank planes. Arthur looks just the same as Eames remembers, he looks like his handwriting, astute and controlled.

Eames drags smoke through the air from the cigarette between his fingers, brings it to his lips, watching Arthur's dark eyes follow the motion. He knows Arthur doesn't care if he is caught watching; it could be that Arthur stares because he knows what his lowered gaze does to Eames.

Eames offers the point man a cigarette, but Arthur has his own. They smoke together in the bitter cold, grey clouds blooming in their lungs to warm them from the inside.

The trees are thin and sparse here, reaching up into a heavy, gunmetal-grey sky. It is a broken thing, reassembled with exhaust fumes and yellowing cloud edges.

"We meet again," Eames eyes have taken on the colour of the sky. The edges crinkle when he smiles.

"Careful, people might start thinking we enjoy each other's company," Arthur returns.

Eames chuckles, lets the flat of his palm smooth over the back of Arthur's arm as they walk.

"Arthur, you wound me!" he says, "I'll have you know I tolerate you fairly well," he says, _I am burning up inside with you near, _he doesn't say.

"Then you're doing better than me," Arthur bites back, "I'm still at mild disdain."

"Only mild?"

An eye roll, a slanted look. Eames chuckles.

A non sequitur then, "Have you researched the mark?"

"You know I have."

"Of course. How predictable of you, darling."

"I think you mean competent. You might like to try it sometime," Arthur punctuates the last with narrowed eyes at Eames' printed shirt.

He'd only worn the ugly thing to get a rise from Arthur. Arthur in his waistcoat and tailored suit. Arthur in his fitted trousers. Arthur in his black leather gloves, clinging to long, elegant fingers. Elegant like weapons. Eames supposes that is what they are.

Arthur's breath mists out from behind his grey scarf.

"The two of us? I really don't think there's anything we can't do. God forbid I started trying."

They stop to get coffee, and Eames flirts with the cashier. He orders a ridiculously sweet drink, with caramel and cream, gets the girl's number on his receipt.

Arthur's coffee is predictably large, black, with an extra shot.

He lets Eames put up his facades and play his games in public; sometimes he likes to watch the change in Eames, like a lightswitch. But he draws his lines, Eames has to be real for him; Arthur will know if he's not. And to think, Eames once fancied himself to be the one calling the shots between them.

Until he stopped applying himself in _approved _areas, his parents and teachers used to say Eames was gifted. He is smart, too smart probably. But what Eames likes about Arthur is that he's just arrogant enough to presume Eames is stupid. He is fast to snap and bite, and shut down ideas.

Arthur is never encouraging; he pokes holes in all of Eames' plans. And Eames uses that to reinforce his ideas until they are bulletproof. If Arthur can't find a way to puncture them, neither can anyone else.

Arthur's mind is quick and dirty and _enclosed_. Arthur is not the kind of person who bounces ideas off of other people. Only off of Eames.

Though he'll never admit it, Arthur feels like he has found an equal in Eames, who realised this long before Arthur did; he's been exploiting it ever since. It's because of this that he can smirk to himself when Arthur is being a condescending twit. With Arthur, you don't pay attention to his words if you want to keep your pride; his actions are where he shines.

When Arthur and Eames brainstorm together, it is always in dreams.

The job that they find themselves together on this time is challenging. The subject, Krypchek, is an ex-war veteran who made his fortune in international trades during his service, a kind of harmless treason, until it wasn't. Eames thinks of him fondly as a kind of Milo Minderbinder; a proper war profiteer. They need to find a couple of security codes to unlock the records that document his treason, to be given to an interested party who wishes to send Krypchek to jail for a very long time. Krypchek's secretive nature means that his current investments will fall apart, opening up the market for said interested party to get a stronger foothold.

Arthur and Eames are feeling the adventurous stretch in their skins that tells them they need to gamble, push the stakes a little higher, and this job is the perfect excuse.

Eames is his female-self. That is to say, she is Eames, but she fits into his dresses better. Arthur should have known that today would be a feminine day; Eames came to the apartment in a cloud of sugary perfume, swaying his hips, knowingly salacious. Eames is beautifully distracting in any body, and he is never shy about displaying any of his.

"Ideas," Arthur says, "Hit me."

Eames groans, and stretches out in her dreamt-up chair, "Where does a man like Krypchek feel safe?"

Arthur is standing arrow-straight, playing with a model city made of impossible sand, building and demolishing casually without lifting a finger, "He doesn't. PTSD, he's going to turn whatever we create into a warzone."

He flattens his hand, and the buildings springing from the tabletop do the same, dropping into so much dust.

"We could try working with that? I could be his comrade. Keep him alive? Earn trust, etcetera."

"Easy enough information to find. But where is he going to hide his secrets if he doesn't feel safe in his own mind?"

Eames kicks Arthur with her stockinged foot. Heels long since abandoned on the floor.

"Build something obvious. A great metal bunker, something that's bloody conspicuous. Something he'll be desperate for."

Arthur nods, "That's an easy maze. We can corral him." The model is taking shape again, trenches carving deep, barricades and barbed wire springing up, the great flat bunker in the middle. "But it doesn't bring us any closer. A bunker would be safe for him physically, but we need something to kick him into thinking about the money."

A pause, there is the scratching of Eames' pen on paper.

"Alright," Eames sighs, "lets trick him into thinking we're about to die. He'll need to tell me."

"Controlled chaos. I'll give you safe passage, pick off any big targets. How are you going to bring it up without letting him know that you're dreaming?"

"I'll think of something."

"That's not going to cut it."

Eames combs her painted nails through her hair, and peers over at the landscape, thinking, "Don't forget to put in some tunnels as insurance." Arthur keeps building, "Actually, don't worry about it. I'm put those in later."

Arthur clenches and unclenches his jaw in silent irritation.

"Well, if it's just me and Krypchek, we could exchange last missives?" Eames continues, "In case one of us makes it? If I can manipulate him into thinking about it beforehand, it'll be on the letter. He isn't superstitious enough not to have carried one."

"You think he'd tell his family?"

"Absolutely. He has a strong relationships with them, would have to for them to support him through all his rehab. Plus it's vital for the inheritance."

Arthur taps his palm against the desk, an antsy nervous tap that says he wants a computer and notepad, "We can work with this. But I need to do some reading. I don't know how accurately I'll be able to replicate Vietnam. There'll be a lot of research."

"With you, there always is."

"Alright."

"How much time have we got left, darling?"

Eames watches Arthur bring his watch to his face, casual in the charcoal-grey suit that he wears like skin. The next second she is blinking awake up above, back in her bulky, heavy, hairy body, and Arthur is already moving to his desk, snatching up his paper.

"I'll find you a target. Take the rest of the day off if you want."

"Yeah, alright mate."

For the month that the job lasts, Arthur wakes up every night to wretch in his toilet bowl, and every morning he goes to work exactly as put together as he always is, but with eyes that are heavier all the time.

Eames can hear him throwing up through the drywall of their conjoining rooms.

It's three am and he decides to pick the lock on the door that separates them. There is a soft click as he lets himself in. The hotel room is dark, and the bed-sheets are rumpled in an imprint of Arthur's body. Eames wonders how Arthur looks sleeping naturally, if he is any more vulnerable without Somnacin, or if he is still tense and guarded.

Light pours under the bathroom door, and Arthur's voice comes muffled through it; "Fuck off, Eames."

"I wouldn't be sleeping in my room anyway, sweetheart, not with the racket you're making."

"Push your bed against the other wall if it-" Arthur's voice stops suddenly, and he breaks into another fit of coughing and wretching.

When his stomach finishes its spams, Arthur speaks again, throat rough with acid, "I said fuck off, Eames."

"I'm not leaving." Eames lies down on the side of the bed that still has the covers made over it, crosses his arms behind his head.

"I'm having a reaction to the new compound," Arthur concedes.

They'd had it shipped from an American chemist; it shouldn't be any different to the normal formula.

"Are you on any other medications, love?"

"If I was, I'd be discussing it with the chemist, not you," Arthur bites, and from him that's a good a 'yes' as full disclosure.

"Well you can stop going under every day," he tries, "Do your job from the surface, yeah?"

The toilet flushes and there is the sound of running water from the sink, when Arthur steps out again, he is smirking, and Eames ignores the hollowness of it; let's Arthur save face this once.

"I need the sleep though," he says. Arthur is wearing a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, and Eames can see dark patterns peeking from under his shirtsleeves that are more than just shadows in the lowlight.

"It's every night, Arthur. You need to rest naturally sometimes."

He laughs, throat raw, "I haven't slept naturally since I started dreaming."

"What, not even on holiday? The half-life of Somnacin isn't more than a month."

"I've always dreamt lucidly. And I don't _holiday_," he snorts.

"That can't be healthy, love."

"I'll manage," Arthur throws himself onto his side of the bed, and curls up around his pillow; the ridges of his spine are barely outlined. He had pushed his hair back with water from the faucet, but now it is starting to curl around his ears, just a little longer than it usually is. His t-shirt pulls up and the bottom and Eames can see that his lower back is dark with coloured ink, the same kind that curls down and cuts off at his elbows. Eames wants to touch and taste it.

"If you're staying; be quiet or I'll shoot you," Arthur mumbles into his pillow, a practical invitation. Eames was right; he is exposed like this, he looks gorgeous.

He falls asleep like that, lying on top of Arthur's duvet, an arm's length away from him. It is a terrible thing to let himself do.

When he wakes up, his arms are numb and Arthur is in the shower. Pale dawn light is creeping steadily into the room as the sun slowly rises, so he lets himself back into his own empty room for another hour or so of sleep.

When they finish the job with the Cobbs, Mal tells Arthur to be careful. "You don't see it Arthur, but Eames is not made of stone. He has a heart. You'll hurt him and you won't even know what you have done until he is gone."

"Mal, we aren't even fucking. Calm down."

But Mal has seen them together now, seen their push and pull, their riptide dance. _You are already two halves of a whole, _she thinks. She looks at him and sees much loss to come.

Arthur knows that it doesn't mean a thing anyway. It's only a matter of time and opportunity now.

_2006_

They collide together again in Moscow. Later the same year in Prague. Arthur lets himself be reckless with Eames, and Eames encourages him.

Dusseldorf, of all places, is the first time that Arthur sells him out and laughs. Eames knows that it is a game; if Arthur had wanted him dead, he would have called one of the corporations that would actually pay for the means to do it, not an ex-colleague with a grudge.

If Arthur had wanted him dead, he might have done it himself.

He certainly wouldn't have been waiting for him back at his safe-house, lithe body wrapped up in his tailored suit, sprawled across his armchair in a room clouded with darkness and cigarette smoke.

"Really, darling?" Eames pants, pulling off his coat before he is even over the threshold, "You could have done so much better."

"I could have," Arthur smirks, voice dragging across his skin, pricking up pores in its wake, "But I'm not convinced that you'd be able to keep up."

He stands, body unfurling. Arthur is his sharp tongue and his dark eyes; Arthur is his violent hands and his homemade explosive gel.

Eames has already started stripping off layers of clothing; he doesn't see the point in stopping now. His belt buckle jangles as it falls to the carpet.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Arthur. I've only just gotten started with you."

Arthur's eyes flick to Eames' quick hands that have started work on the buttons of his shirt, and growls low in his throat.

Eames wants to pull Arthur's neat hair until it's wrecked and ruined, he wants to bite the juncture of his thigh and hip, he wants to take him apart with just his tongue, he wants to point his gun at him and tell him to get out.

Instead he moves closer, and Arthur meets him chest-to-chest. They clash, and it's like all those other times they were waves in a swimming pool, and now they are The Pacific, The Atlantic, they are so much larger.

The kiss is hard, all teeth and tongues.

Being kissed by Arthur feels like it does to watch him kill, fierceness and precision; hot like the burning centre of coal, a fire that keeps consuming.

(That might say more about Eames than it does about Arthur)

Eames takes just as much as Arthur, digs deeper. Blunt fingers sinking into his angles and shadows.

Arthur is a puzzle that Eames wants –no, _needs_– to solve. and it feels like he is about to break open, on the verge of giving something he can't take back –something he wouldn't want to take back.

Arthur pulls away, laughing into Eames' mouth, and then his warm breath is on his neck instead. Distracting him, long hands palming Eames through his trousers.

Eames twines his fingers in Arthur's raven-black hair, pulls until he hisses. Arthur's mouth climbs up his spine, settles at his neck, harsh breath panting and then stuttering in his ear. He holds Eames' scratching hands down with one strong palm, lets the other drag across his broad back.

Arthur could be a pianist, with hands like his. He could be an artist. He could be anything he wants, and he chooses to use his hands to fire weapons and cannulate veins, to kill, and to make Eames shiver with his touch.

If Eames had thought earlier that Arthur wore his suits like skin, it's because he'd never seen Arthur in only his skin before. He is so much more comfortable like this, so much more unrestrained and alive.

Arthur's back is covered in yakuza tattoos that bisect his gallery of scars. They feel like brail under his fingertips, homemade, painful. It's almost like he could read Arthur there if he cared enough _(liar)_. There's dark smudges all over his body, his chest and his hips and his calves; ink that Eames will need to inspect in better light.

His teeth ache from gritting them; Arthur is less concerned about the sounds he is making.

They move together and it was stupid of them to ever be apart.

It is stupid of Arthur, in the morning, to have left by the time Eames blinks bleary eyes open to harsh winter light.

It is maybe stupider of Arthur to have left the note that he did, pinned to Eames discarded underwear on the floor.

_'Still think you can keep up?'_

Eames laughs. He stretches as he gets out of bed, noting the lovely kaleidoscope of bruises that Arthur has gifted him. He decides to make himself pancakes.

_January, 2007_

_Eames' flat in Rio. _

Arthurs forearm is a mess of collapsed veins, bruises in technicolour. It's beautiful. Eames knew he wouldn't be able to cannulate him without waking him, so he had slipped a sedative into his coffee.

He is wasting time, holding Arthur's arm like its bloody glass. But he gets his arse into gear and snaps the tourniquet around his sinewy arm, long cords of spitfire muscle. He does Arthur first, and then punctures his own vein; pushes the plunger on them both and lets the drug sink in.

Eames has made Illinois, Chicago, because Arthur once let slip that he had lived here. He's made it hazy, so Arthur will know he's dreaming, and hopefully think that it is natural. Just row upon row of vague little boxy houses with well-trimmed hedges and scrappy lawns segregated by wire fences.

Arthur checks his totem when he finds himself in the middle of a street, looks around, doesn't see Eames. It's dusk, the sun dipping just below the horizon. The darkness is seeping in, faster than is natural, and Arthur is young, a teenager, maybe 16 or 17, but he's always had a baby face. He has a cheap haircut and baggy jeans, obviously not bought for him. Still, he holds himself proud, just like Eames' Arthur.

Arthur starts running in his taped up trainers, the houses rush by too fast to be real. All a blur, but for one. The clear house is unremarkable except for the details that Arthur had supplied, it's next door to a Japanese restaurant. Eames stops though Arthur keeps running.

He opens a waist-high metal gate which creaks loudly in protest to his intrusion, and walks up the concrete path, barred on both sides by long yellowish grass up to his knees. The TV is on inside, loud canned laughter ripples through the thin plasterboard. Eames doesn't bother knocking.

The house doesn't smell of anything, no pets, no food; probably because Arthur has chosen to forget. There are framed pictures lining the staircase, but their inhabitants are a blur.

The stair squeaks under his weight, and whoever is watching the telly hears and shouts over the loud sitcom, "There's fish fingers in the microwave!"

Eames continues on. The master bedroom is at the end of the hall, and Arthur's must be the only other bedroom up here, door open across from a brown-tiled bathroom. It is small, and painfully nondescript, holding nothing personal; nothing on the surface anyway.

Eames scours the room, ransacks every place a teenager might think to hide their secrets, and then every place a grown career criminal would.

When Eames finishes his search, there is a line-up of discoveries on the brown quilt cover. Nearly $2000 in the inside of Arthur's mattress. A double-edged, four inch folding blade, Damascus steel; too nice for a neighbourhood like this, and very illegal. Eames wonders what a stroppy kid like Arthur has needed to use it for, whether he's already taken his first life, or if he's only got it for show. There is a black notebook, just Hiragana, numbers and symbols. The kind of thing that must represent a place. There is one that appears over and over, it looks like a fish made of three lines. Eames has a feeling this book is not full of his school-friends' mobiles, he pockets it. His search ends when he finds three vials of Somnacin balled up in a pair of socks.

"Find what you were looking for?" Arthur says from the doorway. Eames turns and the vials explode in his hand, glass cutting into his palm. This Arthur is twenty-four again, wearing his favourite black suit, and a look that has something to do with pain, and everything to do with beauty.

The stair hadn't creaked.

Eames doesn't have anything to say, so he just stares.

"Follow me," Arthur says.

They walk back outside, past the bathroom that now smells like blood, and Arthur takes him to the parking lot of the restaurant.

"How old were you here?"

"Fifteen," he says absently, "Don't look so surprised."

"You started dreaming when you were fifteen?"

"I'd been dreaming for two years by now," he says, and Eames sees that he has his Five-Seven out of its holster, flicking the safety on and off; "You were already a thief, what difference does it make?" he doesn't wait for an answer before he points his gun lazily at Eames, "What were you looking for?"

"Arthur. Jesus. Nothing. I was just looking. Wanted to see if I'd find anything."

"You only found what I let you find," He says, cocking his gun; "remember that. There should be two minutes left on the timer."

And he shoots Eames in the chest, and then walks away into the dreamspace, dust clouds kicking up behind him.

"Arthur! You stroppy cunt-fuck, come back here!" he wheezes, lungs grating.

Bleeding out in that carpark, as the dream slowly collapses around him, Eames isn't fooled into believing Arthur's words. He knows he found more than Arthur would ever share willingly, and it was a pittance.

His vision is blurring, young lungs coughing up so much blood. The old bricks of the restaurant are warping around three dripping lines of a graffitied fish symbol._ Huh_.

That's when Eames loses consciousness. When he wakes up in reality, Arthur is already gone. He thinks about the tattoos on Arthur's back, and he thinks about an orphan boy with knives in his mattress and drugs in his sock drawer.

He thinks about how much he wishes that those memories were shared and not stolen.

-  
_April, 2007  
_  
In Paris again, Eames steals Bacon's _Study After Portrait of Pope Innocent X_ for Arthur and leaves it on the doorstep of his flat in Tokyo, wrapped in brown packing paper. It is Arthur's twenty-sixth birthday. He hopes Arthur thinks of it as a 'sorry for breaking into your mind' gift.

Eames begins to realise that he has been in love with Arthur since he first saw him kill with his bare hands.

You don't make friends in the business of dreamshare, and you don't fall in love.

Arthur has been alone all his life, isolated. The exception to this are the Cobb's, who Arthur would, has, and will continue to, die for. He loves them in the only way a man like Arthur can love, fiercely and bitterly.

Eames is surrounded and adored by people, he lets them use him and uses them in turn. But each and every one of them is bared behind a wall of illusion and misdirection. He isn't real for them.

Eames' situation is worse, but no one can see far enough through his smokescreen to know it. No one but Arthur. Maybe no one ever really bothered to try before, or they didn't know to.

The way Arthur looks at Eames must be the way people feel when Eames takes them apart, except with more honesty.

Despite this, Arthur and Eames become what an outsider might call friends. Except with more fucking.

Privately, Eames is letting his grand notions of love drag him around by the heartstrings; Arthur is fighting them with teeth and claws like razorblades.

-

_July, 2007  
Budapest, Hungary_

They spend a week holed up together in a hotel room doing nothing but dreaming and fucking.

Eames is unfocused on the paper in front of him. The handwriting that trickles across the page (not his own) is sloppy work, even for him. Signatures that all look the same but all look wrong; he can't get the short, flat lettering of the subject's hand right.

"Mal was showing me this thing that she'd been working on," Arthur began as he strode into Eames' hotel room, "multi-levelled dreams. I want to try it. See if we can make it work for the job."

Eames swivels around in his chair, "Uhu,"

Arthur has this glint in his eye right now, like he's keeping a secret. The silver briefcase of the PASIV glints from where he is holding it at his side.

"And some other tricks."

Eames grins.

"Dream with me." Arthur says this with the same intensity that his voice holds when he asks Eames to fuck him.

And really, how can Eames say no to that?

"Yeah alright, pet."

Arthur dimples down at him like a fucking child, before pulling out the giving sets and handing one to Eames.

When Eames blinks awake in the dream level that Arthur has created, they are in a small clearing in a damp forest and Arthur is sitting cross legged under a tree.

"Pick a direction and walk," he says, "no mazes, just dreamspace."

Eames does. He walks for about two minutes, through dense, wet forest with thin red light filtering through the canopy. The branches sway and breathe above him. He walks in a straight line until he comes upon the clearing again, Arthur still sitting there, dark lashes low, breathing with his stomach.

"How'd you get here?" Eames asks him.

"Pick another direction," Arthur smirks. And it's not like he's wasting any of Eames time down here, so he does, and walks until he finds Arthur again.

"It's a loop," Eames states, "Are you going to tell me how you did it now?"

Arthur can't get rid of his dimples, he's so fucking proud of himself.

"It's a Mobius strip, with a round border. Walk anyway you want and you'll always come back here. I can do it with a city too. But it gets better. Try again."

Arthur can be a dramatic little ponce when he wants to, and this is coming from Eames. He walks away again, and this time he keeps on for three minutes until he reaches swampland and can't go any further. When he turns around, he sees that Arthur has followed him, silent, like he's stalking his prey.

"You opened the loop?"

"Yeah. Neat, huh? If we implement it on a smaller scale, we can take out projections from behind when they think they're chasing us; we can weaponize it. And that's how I got this next idea."

"Are we going under again?"

"I'm not sure it'd be safe. Too many variables right now."

"You said Mal and Dom had done it," Eames questions, "Did they use a sedative?"

"We are sedated," Arthur laughs, "Don't worry about it for now. Let me show you."

The trees suddenly seem to uproot themselves, and it's like the world is spinning around, with Arthur and Eames at a standstill; the only two things that are grounded in all the haze. It's a fast blur of green and brown, and when it stops, they are standing next to a great cement building. It's a sharp, angular thing that seems to go up forever, impossible. The building is black and grey with a rendered façade and tiny, precise details in the window frames and doors that are unnecessary on a practice run like this. It looks like Arthur.

Eames holds the door open for Arthur.

Inside, it's a library, filled with books.

It is Arthur.

"Oh darling," Eames runs his hand over the spines nearest him, "please tell me these are your secrets."

"Sure, they can be whatever you want them to be. Come on." And then Arthur is walking elegantly up the staircase, long legs taking the steps two at a time. Eames follows.

Arthur reaches the first platform, and he stops to pull a handful of books off of the shelved walls to make it harder for Eames to catch him. A few open, one lands before his feet, off-white pages filled with French words with strange spacing, like visual poetry. Arthur smirks and waits for Eames to step over the books.

"Is this your idea of foreplay? Because you've absolutely no imagination for it, love. You can fuck me in your fancy dream library if you want, all you have to do is ask."

Arthur hums, seeming to consider the idea, "No." He keeps walking up the stairs; "Hurry up old man."

Which is silly because Eames is only five years older, and he's only half a step behind as they take four more staircases and come upon another pile of books. The same pages lie open, French poetry spaced strangely on the paper. The _exact same_ cascade of spilled books.

"Arthur… what?"

Arthur steps neatly around them, and keeps walking, letting Eames look to the ground and realise that they are only one landing up, thought they'd walked nearly seven.

When Eames catches him again, he wraps his palm around Arthur's upper arm, where he knows that under the expensive fabric, Escher's staircases wind impossible ink patterns over his skin.

"Paradox," Arthur grins, standing on the edge of a platform four floors up, where the next staircase is, or was. Now he is looking at a four floor drop that wasn't there before, where the staircase simply ends. "It's another loop."

"Penrose staircase."

Dreaming is a kind of mad pride. They see what others can only begin to imagine, and then they reach out and take it, make it theirs.

Eames' eyes are wide as he looks down at the floor from the top of the broken staircase. And Arthur feels vindicated. This is why he shows Eames his tricks. It's one part showing off, he'll admit, but it's 99 parts because of that intoxicating expression, nothing but awe that Eames isn't even trying to contain. Like he thinks Arthur made it just for him. Maybe he did. No, that would be a lie; but Arthur can't say he doesn't push himself harder just for these pure, unfiltered reactions. Moments where Eames has nothing in his eyes but wonder, wonder that Arthur put there.

He takes Eames by the hand, strong fingers holding tight, "Jump with me," he says.

They wake up again in the hotel room.

Eames is winding up his used IV lines to dispose of. Next he looks up, Arthur has his gun against his own temple. Eames thinks it's a joke until Arthur pulls the trigger and paints the wall in shades of pink.

Eames' totem tells him that he is dreaming, and he lets out a shaky exhale. He smashes all the furniture in the room before he shoots himself awake.

When he wakes again, Arthur is laughing down at him, curled up into a ball of gasps that wrack his whole body. The room is dark and Eames is supine on the bed.

"Your… face," he manages. There is something so sociopathic about Arthur's sense of humour. Eames starts laughing right along with him.

"No wonder my forging was so piss-poor," he says, "It was yours." And he is still half absolutely fucking terrified that Arthur will shoot himself again. Eames' palm is white from gripping his totem too hard. The poker chip bites into his skin; reality, reality, reality.

Eames doesn't think he's ever seen Arthur smile so much, and he realises that he is so, _so _scared of losing him.

"Oh fuck off. That was fantastic," Arthur breathes. And then he is straddling Eames' lap, pressing their hips together and biting his way into his mouth.

-

_June, 2007_

Eames wakes all at once, ears pricking, and he isn't sure why. The shadow of an instinct creeps along his spine, the kind of feeling he's learned to trust. He's taken his gun out of the hotel-standard, bedside table drawer before he realises what had woken him.

There it is again, the flicker and buzz of his cell phone. False alarm. His tension drains away.

The window is open to the cold night air. The only reason Eames hadn't gotten up to close it earlier, is because he has a woman to keep him warm tonight.

She's beautiful, this one, dangerous too. Eames does know how to pick them. She is lying there wrapped up in the white bed sheets, a study in contrasts, breathing in slow motion. And she's clever; an extractor and a good one.

Eames has a type and he isn't ashamed of it. But she is so human. Not like Arthur.

Still, there's no better way to unwind after a successful job than with a sex marathon.

He checks the phone; unknown number.

_- Get out of London. You've been had.  
- Nothing on Lane.  
- A_

The second, same number.

_- You owe me a new identity._

"What is it," Lane mumbles, voice lazy like smoke.

"Come on sweetheart we best move. My flat's not going to be a very nice place to stay for much longer."

"What happened?"

He texts back,

_- Thanks. You going home?_  
Because what else is there to say?

Arthur texts back almost immediately,

- _Brick.  
_It's code for his flat in New York.

"Not sure. It's Arthur, he doesn't say more than he needs to. You're safe though, so it must be an old acquaintance chasing my tail."

Eames tries to text again, but it bounces back. The number is already disconnected.

Lane lands at the end of the bed, fishing for her clothing. She still manages to look languid even in her hurry.

"Arthur, huh?"

"That's him."

"Alright," she says with a smile, but doesn't pry.

Eames has his travel bag and his PASIV in order, so he helps Lane collect her things.

"Drive you to Heathrow?"

"You can drop me at the Underground on the way. I need to stick around."

They kiss, and it's a pity that they aren't going in the same direction because there's still so much more they could do together.

He does drop her at the station, looking so graceful even though she's sleep and sex rumpled.

"You were fun," she says, sly.

"Anytime, love. Just for you," he winks.

She arches an eyebrow and it's such an Arthurian expression, it's like she's saying, _really?_

And he shouldn't be comparing her to Arthur. It isn't fair when he does it, because Lane is a really fit bird, an absolute bloody dream, and he is thinking about that wanker, Arthur.

Then she's gone and he drives away.

_Two weeks later_

Arthur is naked; his pale skin flushed pink. So pretty above Eames. But his smirk and his glinting eyes are a challenge as he rides Eames so slow, painfully slow because he knows Eames can't stand it. They come together, and afterwards, Arthur falls forward so they are chest to chest. Eames tries to hold onto him but he squirms away, sliding heavily to the other side of the mattress, come and lube sticky between his thighs.

Eames straddles his body, cleans him up with the corner of the sheet (something Arthur would swear at him for if he weren't so thoroughly out of his mind right now). He runs his knuckles down Arthur's spine, trailing over the wall of yakuza ink on his back, and it's so beautiful, so bold. It blends nearly seamlessly with his Escher sleeve. It shouldn't, but it does. The colour is bisected with whitish scars, art ruined by fibrous stitching over bullet holes, knife wounds and burns.

Arthur lets himself be turned over, body rag-doll spent, eyes closed. Eames cleans his stomach, takes in the rest of his ink in the afternoon sunlight.

There are obnoxious words tattooed over his body in different languages.

There's Latin, of course he has Latin, which Eames never bothered learning properly. It is old, faded blue ink with two shaky, inexperienced lines of text._  
Faber quisque fortunae suae  
Neutiquam erro_

A first tattoo, maybe?

He has a circular maze tattoo on his bicep. _Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate; _Occam's razor, beside it. A reminder, probably; Arthur has a tendency to overcomplicate things.

A French poem on his chest. Eames' French is poor but his accents are perfect.

_EXISTÂT-IL, COMMENÇÂT-IL ET CESSÂT-IL, SE CHIFFRÂT-IL, ILLUMINÂT-IL_

He reads it aloud to Arthur in English,

"Were it to have existed. Were it to have begun and ended. Were it to have amounted. Were it to have lighted."

Arthur hums in acknowledgement.

"Why Mallarme? Mal talk you into it?"

"No," he huffs.

He has an ouroborus, around his calf, which is terribly Arthur.

There is nothing below his elbows, nothing above his collar.

Eames bites into a spindly black thing on his front flank. Soothes it with his tongue afterwards.

"What do they mean?"

Arthur shoots him a withering glare.

"I'll show you mine?" Eames pries.

A snort. He's right. There's no meaning in Eames' ink. There's no singular quote or image that defines him. Nothing that marks a turning point in his life. Nothing that marks discovery or loss.

"No, really Arthur. Anything you want to know, it's yours," Eames thinks he might actually mean it.

"There's nothing I want from you," Arthur spits. Rat in a cage. An absolute bloody wanker when he's confronted with things he hasn't prepared for.

"Then, pray tell, pet, why are you here?"

He is silent, like he wants to wait it out. And its tiring, the way Arthur will squirm and claw and fight not to give an inch. But they are each as stubborn as the other.

"Why are you _here_, Arthur?"

"They aren't for you, Eames. Let it go."

Arthur rolls out from under him, and then he's gone, walking toward the bathroom, back naked and closed off behind the ink. Tiger eyes watching Eames.

"I need to shower," he throws over his shoulder.

And Arthur's always been like this, even in dream space. His mind is a fortress; his body, well that's always been on offer. Eames isn't sure which he wants more _(liar)._

-

_September, 2007_

Mal was alive in a way that no one else could ever be. She was the sun, brilliant and untouchable. Maybe she burned too bright, too fast. Maybe that is why her life was cut short.

Arthur is the first person that Cobb calls when it happens.

His voice breaks over the phone, "Arthur, I… God, i-it's Mal. Please. I need you."

Arthur hangs up before Cobb can finish. He knows how Mal has been: fraying and incomplete over the past year. It is not the first time Cobb has called him this way. He also knows where they will be, it is their anniversary, and he is working a job in the area in case the kids need babysitting.

He walks out of the warehouse, climbs into a cab, and is outside the hotel within ten minutes.

Retrospectively, Arthur should have stalled. He should have stopped by his apartment first, he should have picked up dinner, he should have done anything but arrive when he did.

He doesn't want to see her body, spread-eagled on the concrete, like a broken bird, like old chewing gum. He looks down, looks away, and there is a piece of bone on the sidewalk under his feet.

He looks up, away, and six floors up, white drapes billow from an open window. It is like she had forgotten her wings.

Arthur has seen Mal die before, but this time he doesn't check his totem. He knows exactly how he has come to be in this time and in this place; all his totem will do is confirm it.

He wants to call Eames because he needs the comfort, and he hates himself for it.

He calls Dom.

_December, 2007_

Arthur doesn't go to the funeral. Eames knows because he made sure to.

Maybe, if they were in a normal relationship, Eames might track Arthur down and ask him how he is coping. But this is Arthur, and Arthur will take it as condescension or coddling.

Maybe, if they were in a normal relationship, Eames wouldn't have to find Arthur; Arthur would come to him. Or maybe he would be the kind of person who didn't know how to erase his identity completely. Life would be easier, but also terribly unchallenging.

In any case, as soon as Cobb is safely out of the county, and set up with Arthur's international network, Arthur disappears.

There's no doubt that he is still keeping tabs on everything; he is too methodical not to. But for any but his own intents and purposes, Arthur doesn't exist.

"What do you mean he's disappeared?"

"I don't know, Eames. He set me up with this job in Seoul and then he just left. He didn't even tell me where he was going. I thought we'd be working together."

It is strange how hard Eames fights to control the tremor of anger in his voice when he asks, "Did he leave a number?"

Cobb exhales heavily on the other line, his voice filtered through the crackling connection, "Its Arthur," Eames can practically hear the shrug that accompanies the other man's words, "If he needs me, he'll find me. That's how he's always been."

Eames curses. The wind whips his hair into his eyes.

"You don't think something could've happened to him, do you?" His words are sharp with panic that he should be able to hide.

"It's Arthur," Cobb repeats, "He's untouchable."

But that's not it at all, Eames thinks. Arthur has never faced this before. He's never cared about someone enough for their loss to hurt. Mal was his only friend, his only family. She was his anchor.

Arthur is gone now because he has finally ironed out Cobb's immediate problems (not his pain or his sorrow, but his safety and his livelihood, the kind of things that Arthur has always taken care of). Now he needs to grieve for himself, disconnect from the world, assess the damage, make a decision; the same way Arthur approaches all unknowns.

But in running away, he left behind his only support. He left behind Eames.

"He can take care of himself," Cobb says.

The problem is, Eames had kind of wanted to take care of him this time.

He should ask Cobb how he is doing now, but he doesn't. Instead he tells him that the funeral was nice. Says he bought the kids Christmas presents. Cobb doesn't say anything. Eames hangs up.

_January, 2008_

A month later, Arthur is on his doorstep in London.

His face is bruised, collapsing like old fruit. He looks halfway to dead. He looks like he hasn't slept since the last time they'd been together.

Arthur smiles, and there is blood crawling up the cracks between his teeth. He looks like a tripwire.

Eames closes the door.

It takes him less than a minute to open it again. When he does, Arthur is sitting on the curb with a cigarette in his mouth, trying to stop his fingers from shaking long enough to light it.

"You bloody asshole," Eames says, dragging him inside.

"I know," he exhales, "I know," and Eames supposes that this is the closest Arthur has ever been to apologising for something.

Arthur won't talk about that month, but he has a newly inked, blood-red rose blooming over his heart right next to his Mallarme.

Arthur doesn't know why he came here. He feels weak for it, needy, scared. Eames could so easily have kept the door closed on him, and he would have understood.

Sometimes he wants to rip Eames apart and tear him to pieces because he's so warm. So warm and so whole. Swallow him and he'd fill you to bursting and warm you to your toes. Eames is a slow burning passion, and he can be so slow. It makes Arthur savage with impatience, it makes him remember that he doesn't deserve this, never deserved him.

"I have a job for us," Arthur offers; and Eames, as he is prone to do, accepts without question.

_Mombasa, Kenya.  
A week later._

They are at Moi International, and Eames thinks that airports are becoming a terribly clichéd theme for them. Arthur has an apartment here, so they don't need a hotel.

The taxi driver is uneasy about Arthur with his beaten up face, bruises turned yellow and sour, his knuckles wrapped up in white bandages like Christmas.

Eames, being Eames, charms the man, gives him a ridiculous tip when they pour themselves out of the taxi and onto the pavement outside of Arthur's flat.

When Arthur has finished disarming the locks and the security system, and the heavy, reinforced door swings open, the first thing Eames sees is Pope Innocent X screaming down at him from high on the otherwise barren walls. Eames wonders if Arthur knows that it is not a forgery, but he doesn't tell him.

The painting is probably the only personal thing in the entire place. Arthur's furniture is the catalogue kind that comes with all apartments like this one, and the rest of the art are prints that people only buy for the frames. Eames is almost offended by it. Arthur's flat has block-out curtains, and nothing but canned food and condiments in the kitchen.

The only other personal touches, besides the painting, are the weapons cache and the hospital-grade first aid kit in the bathroom.

Eames thinks this is the first time he has seen the inside of one of Arthur's flats, and it probably means about as much as the first time Arthur was in one of his; absolutely nothing. These are just empty spaces that they occupy, neither of them have ever had a home.

He opens up the windows in an attempt to breathe life into the dead home, but it's just hot, stagnant air.

The first thing Arthur does is make a thorough sweep of each room and its inventory, his whipcord body all but made to hold a gun. The next thing he does is rip four months of paper squares off his calendar. Eames wonders why he bothers.

_February, 2008  
_  
Arthur has three different kinds of sleeping pills. Or, Eames thinks they are sleeping pills. Little white ovular ones, others that are red and blue like bullets, and the pale blue, circular pills. Eames doesn't ask.

Arthur still doesn't sleep, and when he does he wakes up gasping, or with myoclonic jerks and beads of sweat crowning his pale skin. He is always silent when this happens. His body trembles awake and Eames can pinpoint the moment when he remembers where he is by the flutter of his eyelids and the flare of his nostrils.

He doesn't spend a lot of time trying to sleep either. He is all tight lines of frustration when he wakes again, angry at himself for failing.

"Come here," Eames mumbles, only half awake. He wraps an arm around Arthur's naked waist as he tries to slink out of the bed, presses his face under his arm.

"Fuck off, Eames. I have work to do." Arthur squirms, but he doesn't try to break the hold.

"Not at-" Eames blinks, and the piercing green light of the digital clock burns into his vision, "Not at 3:42 in the morning, you don't. Stay with me."

Arthur lets himself be pulled against Eames; notched spine to bare chest, wrapped up in his tattooed arms. They never do this, and Arthur's muscles are tense as Eames falls asleep around him. He feels like if he doesn't control his lungs, they'll start twitching and spasming in his chest; he breathes long and shakily, let's Eames' rhythm guide him. In out, in out.

When Eames' breathing is thick and even, and soft snores pass his lips, Arthur slips away.

He has a way of coping with his side-effects, and that is to work through them. And when he is done working, when he has tired himself out enough to fall asleep sitting, or collapse in the hallway, Eames is there to put him to bed. Eames cooks for him, and worries endlessly. Arthur powers through his research faster than he ever has before.

Eames has seen Arthur have two absence seizures, and afterwards, had combed his fingers through his dark hair until he came back to himself. Postictal Arthur is a bit like post-orgasm Arthur.

"Let me help you, darling," Eames says as he scoops him up off the hardwood floor.

"Yes," Arthur says, "okay." And it sounds like _Thank you._ _I need you_.

It's bittersweet; they have their highs together like mountains, and their lows are like cliffs. This is the first time Eames has been the one dragging Arthur around. It makes him feel depended on. It almost makes him feel loved.

Eames is morbidly glad that out of all the people in the world that he could have picked, Arthur chose to fall apart with him.

And he knows that Arthur, as he is now, can't let himself love. He isn't naïve; he knows that Arthur has never given himself to another person, but Eames likes to think that he lets himself be caught, lets Eames chase him all over the world; a tug-of-war, thunder and lightning game.

Eames knows that all they do together outside of work, if you were to ask Arthur, is fuck each other and occasionally watch each other's backs.

Arthur never _gave_ himself, but sometimes he left pieces, like breadcrumbs of his soul. Times like now when he lets himself be vulnerable around Eames, when Arthur lets himself rely on him, lets Eames watch him fall apart, catch the pieces and keep them safe until he can glue them back again. And maybe, one day, Arthur will cross that line, wholly and completely, or piece by piece, it won't matter to Eames. He can be patient when he needs to be.

Arthur keeps himself busy, keeps himself exhausted so he doesn't have to think. He's micromanaging for Cobb. Feeding him work, checking his contacts and pulling extra research if he doesn't trust Cobb's point.

He is also working their job for Cobol Engineering and it is complex. The dream is two levels, and this is how they meet Yusuf. Because of the sedatives, Yusuf won't work with them until Arthur stops taking his sleeping pills, so Arthur does.

But after dreaming, he still comes back to the apartment every night to vomit his guts out.

_Three weeks later_

"Did you get it?"

Eames is panting and sweating when he wakes up on the first level, "Of course I bloody well got it. We are the best, remember?"

"Excellent," Arthur says, before swallowing his own gun. He falls forward against Eames when he dies, and Eames has a moment to take in the way his brain looks like toothpaste where it pushes out of his fractured skull. He wakes up when their architect, Ava, unplugs him in reality. She's tense, tells them two vans pulled up in front of the building that don't look like courier trucks.

Wisely, Yusuf is already on a plane halfway to Shanghai, having turned in his share of the job along with his account details the night before.

When they have packed up and are leaving the building, the lift is broken and they know they've been had.

It's a dirty job, dreamshare. But they didn't get their reputations through exaggeration.

They take the fire escape to the building's roof and they run. Bullets ricochet around them, and one of them buries itself in Arthur's bullet-proof vest with a dull thud. He tumbles forward and comes up running with scrapes on the underside of his chin and on his palms.

Ava is fast, and she has a way of blending into the shadows, placing herself on the other side of Arthur and Eames and the gunfire. Clever.

Another shot skims the bare edge of Eames' shoulder. He feels it like you feel an injection, fleetingly, and then it is gone in the wake of his flight. It is like something from a dream, and Eames nearly forgets that if he falls, he won't wake up.

Arthur is laughing when they are in a backstreet in the city half an hour later, climbing out of their second cab on their detour to the train station.

Ava is making her way to her own safe-house outside of the city. She left with the assurance that Arthur would wire her her share of the pay (presuming they are paid).

Now they are alone and Arthur kisses Eames, and he tastes like blood from where he bit through his tongue falling forward. He kisses Eames again, harder, and Eames tries to suck the metallic taste away.

Arthur moves down his body, pushes Eames up against the dirty brick wall, digs his sharp fingers into the bullet wound on Eames' arm, doesn't apologise when Eames gasps in pain.

"Come on, you fucking asshole," he hisses when Eames fumbles with his zipper. Fumbles because he is looking down his body at the top of Arthur's short-cropped haircut, pointed ears and child-like features, heart like stone.

Then it's all spit-slick and surreal and Eames lets himself go, lets Arthur take care of him.

When Eames comes, Arthur lets his body slide heavily down the wall. He goes to spit, and when he comes back, he looks down at Eames. Says, "Come on you fucking asshole. You'll bleed out if you stay there."

It was definitely more than a graze. Back at the flat, Arthur stitches up Eames' shoulder with fingers like barbed wire. His bedside manner is worse.

Arthur tapes up his own ribs.

The money comes through from Cobol, who swear that no one on their end tipped of the mark. The logistics don't matter, as long as they are alive and paid.

They move on, Arthur has a job with Cobb. They go to Amsterdam.

Arthur won't let Eames work with them this time. It's not that he doesn't want Eames around; it's just that the only reason for them to bring in a forger would be to distract the mark. Arthur can achieve the same effect with a block of dreamed up C4, and he tells Eames as much.

Eames has nothing lined up. So he follows anyway.

_Amsterdam, The Netherlands  
March, 2008_

Arthur is himself again, and it is like he'd never broken at all. A seamless forgery at least, a delicate repair job. Moving forwards, only to hasten back.

The PASIV is sprawled out on the table before Arthur in the hotel room they are sharing. It is a gutted thing, insides strewn about with bullet point precision.

Tiny screws glint like diamonds after Arthur had scrubbed them with a clean cloth. Every piece is removed, oiled, and put back in its place afterwards. Arthur's mind keeps the blueprints, the PASIV is like an extension of his self.

Watching him and knowing him, Eames thinks that Arthur's heart must have been broken one time, probably when he was only a sprog.

And now he empties himself so he doesn't have to feel a thing, bled his heart out one day so there was no room for it to beat for anyone but himself, because Arthur's always taken care of himself, and he's done a damn good job of it. So he took his heart and he patched it up with walls of steel and mechanical valves and cogs, with barbs and spines and 'keep out' signs. He cleans and maintains it like he does with his PASIV, and it is strong.

But Eames was always a romantic. Maybe Arthur is just cold. Maybe he doesn't have a heart.

Arthur thinks Eames is in love with him, and it scares the fuck out of him. Because every time he turns around to run, Eames will let him, give him room to breathe and fill his lungs and then he'll be there again. Arthur feels like Eames built the sun with his bare hands just for him, like he holds up the sky, pinned it with stars and said 'this is for you'. And it's always been okay because he never asked for anything in return, he never asked for anything that Arthur couldn't give.

Eames has always been insidious. He has crept into Arthur, insinuated himself under his skin and deep in his bones and Arthur had let him and now Eames thinks that he belongs.

He doesn't know what to do. Arthur has only ever known how to run and fight. He doesn't know how to love. He doesn't know how to be loved.

-

Arthur hates Dom for what he has done to Mal's memory.

It isn't even the way she always hurts him, 'Is this real?" she screams at Dom as she shoots Arthur, again and again. Or cuts him, always just enough that he will have to bleed out instead of dying easily. Maybe it is just easier to focus on the pain than the heartache. Pain is something Arthur can deal with; but he hadn't realised he even had a heart until it breaks.

When he wakes up, he rips his cannula out with none of his usual finesse, clamps his hand around his arm to stop the bloodflow, and walks straight to the bathroom before Dom can wake to say he is sorry.

He comes out less than a minute later looking exactly as he always does, tight smile in place, fault lines creeping invisible over him.

Arthur can't ever remember having cried before that night. He does it when Dom and their chemist have left for the night, in the warehouse because he can't do it in front of Eames, and he hadn't exactly planned for it anyway.

It keeps happening. All Dom can do for Arthur is wake him up. Neither of them can hurt her.

Arthur can forgive the pain, he can forgive the torture. He cannot forgive the hate that glints hard in her eyes. Not hers, Mal had loved Arthur. The hate is all Dom's.

Arthur stops taking his medication again, he will be okay for a while, but right now he can't stay up every night vomiting his guts out and not sleeping, only to have to wake up in the morning, and go to work, to this.

People always think that pills mean you are out of control. They think addiction, they think chaos. Not Arthur, Arthur is usually well medicated. He has never had a problem with control. It's taken him a long time to find this precarious balance, this functionality that he needs.

Not for the first time, Arthur wants scars and broken bones and pain. The kind of thing that other people can see and understand. Instead he has medication and isolation.

Arthur will finish the job, and then he will fix his routine, and then he will go to Yusuf and demand that he makes some Somnacin that mixes better with his meds.

Eames should have seen it sooner, the way that Arthur's seams are pulling apart with ragged edges. He has become threadbare and worn, with creases of overuse and overwork; he is fraying. If Arthur were one of his suits, he would have thrown himself out years ago.

But Eames didn't see it; Arthur seems to have become a bit of a blind spot for him.

Not for the first time, Eames wonders where they stand. When he reassembled Arthur back in Mombasa, did he earn the right to be his crutch?

_Yes_, Arthur had said, _okay_. And he'd meant _I need you_. But he's Arthur so he didn't say it, couldn't say it. Eames had let himself be used and didn't care at all.

He only knows that something is wrong because Cobb tells him.

"Dom said Mal has been showing up in his dreams," Eames segues, faux casual.

Arthur, his back turned to Eames' entrance, stays still. There is only one place for this conversation to lead. He has a feeling, a pit in his stomach, a seed of terrible doubt. He's always had good instincts, and right now his brain is screaming at him to stall, deflect, run, _run_, keep running.

He knows what Eames is about to say. He'll say that Arthur is sick, that he is broken, that he is 'not coping', he needs help. It's such fucking carer language, Arthur has always hated it. There is a chill in the air, seeping into his bones. The kind of cold that cracks skin raw until it bleeds and bites and bleeds some more. Arthur is bleeding, has been for a long time.

Eames would have found his drugs again, and he'd think 'sick' instead of 'well' like they really mean. Why else would he be talking to Cobb about him?

Arthur feels the sky bend, star pins falling down. The sun dims. It's all about to crash down.

He can't speak, so he arches an eyebrow at Eames, a familiar gesture, a silent invitation to go on.

Eames fidgets, which he never does.

"It's okay to miss her, you know," he begins, "I mean, I know I wasn't as close to her as you were, but… you never really grieved properly, you just took off. When you came back you wouldn't talk about it. For all I know you never dealt with any of it. And if you did find someone to talk to, that month when you were gone, that's fine. But please let me know, darling? I need to know."

_Why?_ Arthur thinks, _Why do you need to know? It won't change anything. What gives you the right?_

"I want to be there for you, and look after you, but I can't do that if you don't let me in, Arthur." Eames exhales heavily, the weight of his breath resting on his words.

And now Arthur is thinking that he shouldn't have let Eames stay for so long; he should have made him leave after their job in Mombasa, and he _never_ should have let himself rely on him like he has been doing. Arthur can't be owned. He needs to look after himself; he cannot lose that.

Eames finishes speaking, his mouth is sandpaper dry; he already knows he's said the wrong thing. Arthur's eyes bore into him, his face is otherwise blank.

"You need to earn that," Arthur says.

"Oh fuck off Arthur! Haven't I?!" Silence, a deathly, heavy silence. The kind that's filled with things with needles and thorns and spines.

"You came to _me _this time, have you forgotten? You came to me looking more dead than I've ever seen you. And I've seen you so fucking dead Arthur! I've seen you kill yourself and then laugh at me. Don't you think we've been together long enough now that I can see through your shite? And you still aren't going to admit that you rely on me? That you trust me?

Don't you think it's time that I got a say in this?"

Arthur is not going to say anything. And he feels, or rather, he doesn't feel the cool, numb feelingless hate of finality. Like vermin. Like he is drenched in ugly ideas. He is cornered.

"You prat, Arthur. I've always known you were a piece of work. But I have fucking _earned_ your trust."

"I don't know what you think this is," Arthur chokes, slowly and painfully and finally, "but we aren't _together_." And his eyes are savage and animal, "I'm better off alone."

This is the problem with Eames, he thinks. You give him a thread of yourself and he will pull until he has a spool. You let him in once, and he thinks he has permission to be there always.

They have been living in each other's space for two months now and it is the longest they have ever stayed together. Too long. One of them always has to move on. Both are the kind of unstoppable forces that probably shouldn't have come together to begin with. There is a violence to them both, an instability. It's magnetic, the way they always find each other; but it doesn't feel that way now.

Arthur knows it's time for him to leave. He feels so lost here.

The bedroom is only dimly lit, yellow light pushing in from the kitchen. Eames had been dozing, sated after having been fucked into the mattress, both of them venting out their frustrations on each other's bodies. But it wasn't make-up sex. They've had make-up sex and this was very far from it.

Arthur cares about Eames; there is no point denying it. But he can't make himself do the things that he knows will make him happy, not right now.

Arthur might even love Eames, but all of the words that he should have said so long ago are choking him and he can't get them out, can't breathe life into that fucking frightening declaration, _I think I might love you._ So it is likely that it will die there, along with _how much_ and _for how long_ and _why_. Arthur wishes he could kill those phrases himself.

His feet are too quiet and too cautious on the scratchy carpet when he gets out of bed, and his eyes are darker than his silhouette when he looks back from the doorway.

"I know you're awake," Arthur says to the dark room, before walking out.

In the morning, he's gone.

Strangely, Eames expected him to still be there. Expected to curl up against him, gather Arthur's tangled limbs against his chest. Prickly from being woken, he would squirm away like normal.

But he isn't in the flat. He's still running point for Cobb so he won't have left the city, just switched hotels. Eames could ask the concierge. He could go to the warehouse, he could talk to Cobb. He could just pick up the phone and call Arthur for fuck's sake. But he won't do any of those things.

If Arthur had really needed him, he wouldn't keep leaving him behind.

This is when he realises that he has been the sand to Arthur's hurricane. Always moving and adapting to him, swept up and carried away; helpless to Arthur's whims, the sheer carnal force of him. But he cannot be changed.

And it has been fun, but Eames knows when it is time for him to grow up and move on. He should have realised years ago that there wasn't any space for him in Arthur's life. This time feels so much more final than all the others. Eames is done following; it never suited him.

He feels an acute loss, but he tells himself that you can't mourn someone that you never had to begin with. They were both unhappy anyway, a house of cards that they built higher and higher; it was always going to collapse, come tumbling down and shred them with papercuts. He tells himself that Arthur was right, that they will both be better off.

If their story had been a tragedy, Eames thinks that this would be a nice place for it to end. Arthur always looks his most beautiful when he is turning his back to walk away. But life does not end when you think it might be convenient, it trundles on long after the fade-to-black and the credits start rolling. Life is a clumsy, meandering thing.

Eames doesn't realise that this _is_ Arthur grieving. This is Arthur facing his problems, even if it looks like he is running away again.

What Eames doesn't realise is that all this time, he's been looking at Arthur wrong. He's put him so high up on his pedestal that he lost sight of him. Arthur is perched up there, clinging to the edge, too fucking scared to dive off, to let go. Afraid Eames won't be waiting to catch him at the bottom.

Eames goes back to Rio. He is giving up, finally. A lesser man would have done it years ago.

_November, 2009  
Paris, France_

Arthur works with Cobb for a year. He learns to forgive him. He becomes a crutch and it hurts for him to think that he lost his.

Dom gets better, or at least, better at hiding and burying his problems.

Arthur gets better at that too. He looks impassive, he looks untouchable. Underneath, he feels like nothing more than a bag of warm fluid, like a corpse. He walks so near to the walls that he worries he'll fade into them. But he does his job, just like he always has. He shutters off his feeling. He can be bitter and lonely with Dom; there is that old saying, about misery and company.

But his pain is different this time, because he still feels. He feels too much, cares too much.

Arthur misses Eames like burning. He misses him like a part of himself was ripped out, taken away but still connected across the world by millions of electric nerves. He feels him even when they are apart, more than he ever felt him when they were together. It's worse because he knows exactly where Eames is, who he's working with, who he's fucking.

Arthur wants to cut those nerves off, dig them out, debride them, roots and all.

Arthur wants to start again. He wants to go back to that airport, to Johannesburg where they first met. When he thinks back he doesn't even remember their conversation; but he remembers Eames' hand, warm around his, handshake loose but captivating. Eames has the kind of handshake that reels you in and keeps you hanging, and when he releases you, you still think you were the one that had been leading.

And fuck all if it wasn't always just both of them dragging each other around blindly, neither knowing what's too much and what just won't cut it. Not knowing where each other gets off, and how they can meet there together.

Arthur wants to go back to that airport and turn around and catch the next flight to wherever. He wishes they'd never met.

He'd always been the one to walk away. At the start, he had liked it. He'd felt so wanted, he had felt powerful.

He'd thought, _this is new, this is fun_, and he'd let it happen. He'd let Eames chase after him, he'd let Eames catch him, he'd let Eames play with him. And somewhere along the way Arthur had crumbled a little bit, he's let things slip. A distant memory, a piece of his past, he would have given his future, too. He'd shared his dreamscape discoveries, raw ideas, things he wouldn't have dared to show another person; and he'd shown Eames because he'd cared what he thought. He wanted to show him that he had imagination, he had passion. He wanted to impress him. Arthur had wanted to see the exhilaration writ all over Eames as it had been all those times.

And he'd taken that too.

And those are not the kind of things that career criminals are supposed to share with one another. Those are especially not the kind of things to be shared with a man like Eames.

And that's why Arthur had fought, because what if he had let Eames under his skin? What if Eames had finally pried open his head and climbed inside? What if he decided that it was boring, unimpressive, un-imaginative. What if he didn't liked what he found?

And why would he?

No, if Arthur had given him a foothold, he would have seen right through him like glass. Arthur is all glass; sharp, transparent, _fragile_. Eames would have looked into him and seen the cornered little kid kicking out at a world that had kicked him down so much harder. He'd take one look at Arthur's soul and think _'is that is?' _and then he'd realise that what he'd been chasing all along wasn't really what he'd wanted after all.

Worse, what if Arthur had liked it so much, that he forgot how to live without that closeness?

Well, Eames had seen, and he had done just that. And now Arthur didn't have to make the decision anymore.

Arthur knows he is not better alone. Alone is predictable, alone is safe; but it is not better. Eames brought out the best in him, and sometimes the worst, but it was always worth it.

But Arthur can't go back to him, because in all his self-destruction, he knows that he had been poison to Eames. He was a creeping tide of sickness and addiction. He was rot. In their last fight, Arthur had done Eames the greatest kindness he ever could have. He'd pushed him enough to let him go.

Arthur is not happy, but he is well.

He will stay that way as long as he knows that Eames is okay.

_Paris, France  
2010  
Inception_

They haven't seen each other for over a year.

Dom, blinded by his own world, so weighted down by his dragging heart, didn't notice. So when he tells Arthur they need a forger, he doesn't think to ask, _will you be okay with Eames here? _Arthur wouldn't have it any other way. He does not need to be pitied, and he will not sacrifice the job because of his emotions.

For whatever reason, Arthur lets Dom go to track down Eames, he even shows him where to start looking. Eames is still in his old apartment; he'd taken over the lease when Arthur let it run out. He misses his screaming pope painting.

Arthur does not expect Eames to say yes to their offer. In fact, he is sure that he'll turn the job down, do as they've been doing and keep avoiding each other all over the world, like a broken game of hide and seek where one of them forgot their role. He is so sure of it, that he tries to push Eames out of his mind as best he can.

Arthur is setting up the PASIV lines for himself and Ariadne: bright, quick little thing that she is, and his hair keeps falling out of its hold and forward into his eyes. He had started growing it out when Eames left; he used to clip Arthur's hair short for him every few weeks, how he'd liked to wear it. Arthur wonders if Eames will like it this way, or if he will even notice.

He laughs aloud, making Ari turn to him in mild bewilderment. Even thoughts of Eames mimic the man's nature: slow, pervasive, and so nostalgically warm. Arthur lets himself be comforted by that warmth. He is not afraid. He realises he wants to see Eames, he wants to thank him.

-

Eames is sitting with Dom Cobb in a sunny bar in Mombasa. Cobb, the man who he has resented on and off as long as he has known him simply for the things that he has put Arthur through. Intrinsically, Cobb is selfish; and right now, he is also desperate. Desperate, selfish men are dangerous, capable of terrible things. It is not like Arthur to work with someone like that. Still, the job offer has been presented. It sits heavily between them like a vacuum, like past and future, like possibility.

For whatever reason, Eames says yes.

Maybe it is Inception: the lure of a challenge too great. Maybe it is Cobb himself, maybe Eames wants to honour their history? But it is probably Arthur. Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. He thinks of the name with no bitterness anymore. The loss is still there, but it is flavoured with hope. And maybe it's stillbecause he likes a challenge that he says yes, and climbs on that plane to Paris, the city of love of all places, to dream with Arthur again.

When they finally see each other, Arthur is coming out of a dream with Ari, Eames is on his mind again. He was showing her their staircase, after all; the paradoxes are as much Eames' as they are Arthur's, because he inspired them.

Arthur's mind is foggy from dreamspace, his limbs heavy; the first thing he notices on waking is a familiar perfume, and when he opens his eyes to Eames' carefully put together expression of polite interest, a feeling bubbles up from inside him faster than he can possible close himself to it. Arthur smiles; eyes crinkling, dimples showing; it is a proper smile. Eames always did have a knack for finding him vulnerable.

"Eames," he breathes out.

"Arthur," Eames returns, dragging his name out with curiosity, head cocked slightly to the side, crooked-toothed smile turning genuine.

"Our forger?" Ariadne questions, blinking sleepily and shifting in her reclining chair.

"Eames, this is Ariadne, our architect. She's very talented."

Ari blushes to the tips of her ears, but she is calm when she shakes Eames hand.

Arthur stands to leave; he has to write down his thoughts from the dream before they escape him.

"It's good to see you," Arthur tries, and he forces himself to be causal when he reaches forward to squeeze Eames' shoulder. A gesture of friendship, when really he just wants to touch.

"You too."

And that is their reunion. Strangely, it is not underwhelming. The way it's always been between the two of them, you would expect them to crash together like lightning, you would expect blood and fanfare. Not this, this foundation of peaceful truce.

If Eames had any lasting bitterness toward Arthur, he vented it by watching Yusuf push him repeatedly out of his chair and slap him awake. Maybe it was even as hard as it was to watch as it was hilarious.

Eames is an actor, and a very good one at that, so when he finds it nearly impossible to stop smiling and poking and prodding when he is around Arthur again, it is a serious problem.

"Eames," Arthur says, after he has laid out his painstakingly-crafted, and misleadingly casual plans; "I am impressed." It's not such a strange thing, Eames knows he used to impress Arthur all the time. The difference this time is that Arthur is telling him.

When did he become the kind of man who would let Eames know when he was pleased? Maybe Arthur didn't realise that he'd never said something like this before aloud; not with words, anyway.

So Eames deflects for both of them, puts them back on neutral ground, even as his body thrums with satisfaction, "Your condescension, as always, is much appreciated Arthur, thank you."

Arthur is different. He is calmer. Less of a storm; yes, he still has that passion, but now it is focused. He is less likely to snap, and he is, if possible, more efficient. Arthur doesn't go out of his way to touch Eames, but he doesn't go out of his way to avoid touching him either.

And if Eames still looks at Arthur's body wrapped up in his suits and remembers what it was like to peel back those layers, to watch his muscles flex and pump until his patterned skin was slippery with sweat, to press his own body against Arthur's and bite and lick and strain against him, well… that is just a stress that he will have to get used to working out privately. Bloody jam-on-toast, Eames is in trouble.

Working with Eames is fun. He's always been fun. And after everything he put Eames through, well, that should be enough. That will have to be enough.

So maybe they'll never again be who they used to be, but still, they seem to have reached a kind of plateau, a steadiness that they've never experienced before. Respect and trust (in this at least); they are friends.

It is enough, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

_Come back to me,_ he thinks, _but only if you want to._

Then Eames went to sleep on an airplane, his eyelids dropping heavily down over the lasting image of Arthur looking drowsy but composed.

Eames went to sleep in the back of a van with a black bag over his head.

He went to sleep in a hotel room with the exact same carpet as his own London flat, Arthur hovering over him, fingers strong but gentle around his wrist, thumb hovering just slightly.

He watched the death of a bitter old man, and he witnessed the inception that would save his son from the same fate. The charges blasted, foundations crumbling. Eames woke up, and up, and up.

He woke up on an airplane, to the calm chiming of the seatbelt sign, and Arthur across from him, face flooded with relief.

The whole experienced reeked of mortality.

He watches Arthur fumble his totem from his pocked, long, dextrous fingers turned clumsy with the sedation still thrumming in his blood. He rolls his die right off the edge of the single-serving tray table, curses as it tumbles over the floor and bumps against Eames' shoe.

Eames' fingers linger a little longer on his wrist than they need to as he hands back the die, its secrets hidden securely in the napkin he picked it up with. His touch feels so intimate to Arthur.

"There you go, mate," he says softly; and they are strangers again, playing their parts while Robert Fischer presses his face into a hot towel, while Saito fumbles to make a phone call, Cobb looks a thousand times lighter, and Ari is floating.

They get off the plane, still strangers, two strangers that know each other so intimately it's terrifying.

_Los Angeles  
3 hours later_

The surface of the bar is gritty against Arthur's forehead, sticky with second-hand sorrows, with pity. Arthur is not to be pitied. He did this to himself and he is going to accept full responsibility for it, right after he gets properly wasted.

Right now he is only on his first drink, but there's no rush. He has all the time in the world.

Kissing Ari: that had been a very clear mistake. With retrospect, of course.

When she'd recovered from the shock of it, her doe eyes frozen tharn, she'd punched him hard in the shoulder.

"What was that for, you asshole! What about Eames?"

"Eames?" he'd said. He knew she was perceptive, but how had she read Eames in that kiss? Arthur thought of the way Eames' lips were softer and fuller, his heavy, searching palms; not like Ari's cool, delicate fingers. Their bodies pressed hot and warm, strength and muscle, stubble scratching, pieces locking together. No, there was nothing Eames about that kiss.

"You can't go kissing other people, Arthur! You'll break his heart! Unless you guys have had that discussion already and he's cool with it…" she had trailed off, arms crossed over her chest, "But you are going to have to find another third wheel because I am not getting in the middle of what you guys have. No thank you."

And Arthur, well, he didn't think it was worth the energy to correct her.  
_No Ari, we're not together.  
We don't _have_ anything anymore.  
I'm still in love with him, but he's done with me._

_He deserves better._

But she's the kind of terrifying intuitive that she probably already knew.

Instead, he had coughed to clear his throat, "We better get moving."

Arthur lifts his head, only to let it fall against the bar again. Now, sitting here, slowly tipping the balance in his bloodstream closer to inebriated, Arthur feels pathetic.

He tells himself all he needed was a good post-job fuck. A celebration of having cut it so close to the wire and still made it out alive. This one was perhaps too close, Arthur isn't sure if he liked the rush or not. It felt too reckless, and now it feels worse to come out of it alone. He's already turned away one drink from a stranger, which is pretty telling that he will spend tonight alone.

He's not drunk enough yet to admit that all he wanted was to be held.

And he feels so fucking stupid.

Arthur isn't even focusing on the door, but he feels a familiar draw, the same kind of feeling that says _run_, the same kind of feeling that says _stay_.

Eames slips through the crowded bar, easy, like he has been doing his whole life. You'd think a man like him with the muscle that he has to throw around would be perpetually intimidating. But he has a way of disappearing when he needs to, blending in. Just like he can get everyone in the room's attention with a shift of posture and stride. He doesn't though, not today. Today he is more subtle.

Today he only has Arthur's eyes on him. And it's so natural, the way Eames is pulled in like the tide, like Arthur is his moon, like there's no other reason for him to be here. But Arthur had seen the surprise flicker through his eyes when he had walked in. They are each the last thing the other had expected to see, and the first thing they had wanted.

He keeps his seat in the corner, hunched over the bar, pretending that the man who drifted through the door hadn't just sent his pulse running like rabbit feet.

If Arthur was the kind of man who believed in fate, he would think that this was destiny. He might say goodbye, he might say _I love you_, he might take Eames back to his hotel room and say farewell that way instead.

Arthur does not believe in fate, but he so desperately wants to. He peels himself off of the bar and downs his drink, amber liquid lighting a path of courage down his chest, gestures for two more.

"Drinking away our sorrows, are we?" Eames' voice is familiar, rough and sincere. He leans in, too close, not close enough, and wraps his clever fingers around the glass Arthur ordered for him.

_Trying to drink away you.  
_"Celebrating," Arthur answers, raising his tumbler to toast, "to inception?"

Eames nods, lets the liquid burn down his throat like he needs it. Arthur does the same, and now he is starting to feel just a bit lightheaded.

"I need to smoke. Do you-?" Arthur hesitates.

"Yeah, I do. Let's go." Eames guides him out of the bar with a warm palm on the small of his back. The volume of the bar dims and Arthur's world is narrowed down to that small point of connection.

The night is smoky and lit by the orange glow of the streetlamps. The city is cement and glass; it's too small for them. They sit on the curb with the cigarette butts and leaf litter.

Eames had always smoked like his hands were far too big for his cigarette, and he looks uncharacteristically clumsy now, outside of the bar that Arthur can't for the life of him decide why he chose to begin with.

It is so much harder than he thought, being alone with Eames. It is so much better, so much more terrifying, so much more intense. Eames takes up so much space, like he is the only thing that is worth paying attention to.

He opens the pack of cigarettes for Arthur, who accepts, and lights off of Eames', connecting their mouths with cigarettes when it should be more than that. When they both know it should be more than that; they are so close together and so far apart now that it's painful.

Arthur wants to file down his edges, cut himself into pieces that will fit against Eames. Show him how they belong together, how they complete each other. He would do anything to have that chance again.

And this might be fate.

Or it could be chance.

Arthur believes in chance; so he rolls the die.

Slowly, he reaches out, cups Eames' cheek in his palm and lets his thumb brush against the grain of his stubble.

Eames breathes in, quick and sharp, but he doesn't pull away. They wait each other out, just the gentle contact, the tentative steps toward each other. Eames breaks. He exhales smoke with a tired chuckle, more beautiful than he has any right to be, and closes his eyes as he turns just slightly into Arthur's touch.

"What are we doing, Arthur?" but his warm hand has found its way to the back of Arthur's neck, a gentle, grounding pressure. His other palm rests on Arthur's shoulder blade, carefully cradling his cigarette. Their noses bump, foreheads resting together. Eames' eyelashes are still lowered, but Arthur can't take his eyes off of them.

They breathe each other's warmth.

"I need to say something," Arthur tries.

"Are you sure, darling?" Eames says, "You need to be sure."

Arthur swallows heavily, and nods because words feel too big and too clumsy around his tongue right now. Eames is so in tune with him. He probably knew what Arthur had to say before he knew himself: that he is worth the uncertainty, and he is worth the risk of a broken heart. A minute with Eames is worth the pain of losing him.

"I've never been surer."

Arthur isn't sure who moves first, but then they are kissing. Eames' fingers wind their way through his hair like muscle memory, his tongue injecting him with that feeling he'd so desperately tried to forget. A hunger that Arthur had tried to bury, stirring up from inside, devouring him. It's like fire in his blood, bright and fierce again. That forgotten spark, that match-struck flood of gasoline, sweet soaring burn. He didn't know he needed this feeling so much, the feeling of Eames' lips and his hands and his breath, his lust and his all-consuming love. He wonders how he managed so long without it.

"I've been waiting for you," Eames kisses the words into the corner of his mouth.

But Arthur pulls back, exhaling shakily. He keeps their foreheads pressed together, both of them panting into each other's mouths, needing each-other's closeness more than ever.

"I'm sorry," he finally says.

"I know. It's okay, darling."

"I should have said," Arthur exhales, shaky and broken; "You matter to me."

"I'm still in love with you." And that 'still', well it doesn't surprise Arthur in the slightest. He knew all along. Arthur captures his mouth again, the kiss in hungry, panting and desperate.

"Me too." He had known all along.

And if their story had been a film, Eames thinks that this would be a great place for it to end. A tale is always more beautiful when the anti-heroes kiss and confess their love at the end. This story might be a happily ever after, but their time together is not over yet. Arthur's sadness still sleeps; it will stay in the base of his spine for the rest of his life. But Eames will always be there to make it bearable for him.

This is but a painting framed and neat at the edges, glossing over the places the artist decided were too boring or too ugly to include. Those things are still there, hiding just out of the frame. Life is not perfect, and theirs are far from it. But they will always be better together.

There are too many moments when they are unbreakable. Too many moments when life roars through their hollow chests and their twitching nerves, soars over synapses, and they crash, completely, against one another. They each are a violent, reckless completion of one another; it couldn't be any other way. They are two halves of a whole.


End file.
